Erin Jordan

Under Senate Study Bill 1123, Department of Correctional Services directors would report to Corrections Director Beth Skinner. not regional boards. Skinner told lawmakers earlier this month the changes would save the state millions of dollars, but her office has not made public a consultant report they say provides information about the cost savings.

Kathleen Kooiker, of Osceola, who served on the Board of Parole from 2018 to 2021, said she was wrongfully discharged from the paid position when she complained to the governor about former chair Helen Miller’s decision to let alternate board members make parole decisions.

A majority of the Winneshiek County Board of Supervisors voted earlier this month to freeze funding for the roadside vegetation management program, started in 2016, because they say that money would be better spent updating snow plows and other Secondary Roads equipment.

Iowa Homeland Security will pay more than $600,000 to replace firefighting clothing and equipment damaged in a Dec. 8 explosion and fire in Marengo after the company whose plant exploded refused to pay.

Iowa could lose 75 percent of its 42 ethanol plants — with cascading harm to the corn industry — without carbon dioxide pipelines proposed for the state, according to a study commissioned by the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association.

The Iowa Bandmasters Association chose the Northwest Junior High 8th grade band to play at the association’s annual conference in May in Des Moines. Other Corridor schools picked to play at the conference are the 6th grade band at Boulder Peak Intermediate School in Marion and the Independence High School band.

Iowa will pay a contractor up to $834,000 to remove toxic “forever chemicals” from water in a 12-million-gallon basin holding runoff from a December explosion and fire in Marengo.

Donations to Iowa's Fish/Wildlife fund, informally called the Chickadee Checkoff, fell nearly 15 percent last year, but have been gradually shrinking since the fund was created in the early 1980s.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources no longer has a deadline by which C6-Zero must clean up a Marengo explosion site, but is requiring the company to pay more than $400,000 for the work.

State and local regulators will be joined by C6-Zero representatives for a hearing Monday in Iowa County over whether a judge should force the company to comply with an emergency order to clean up the site of a Dec. 8 explosion and fire.

ChopLocal.com, an Iowa-based online market created in 2020 to connect small meat producers with customers, now is helping 45 farms and butcher shops in 12 states sell their products directly to consumers.

Ten years after founders bought an 8-acre parcel off Benton Street southwest of downtown Iowa City, Prairie Hill is developing its last of 11 buildings. Four of the five units in the new building already are sold with homeowners expected to move in by June.

As the American dairy industry has struggled, Austin and Jenna Schulte got a $36,000 Value-Added Producer Grant from the USDA to create a business plan and conduct a feasibility study on opening a creamery in Benton County.

The Center for Hydrologic Development, funded with federal money, will focus on federal research and predictions, which means the Iowa Flood Center still will need state funding, director Larry Weber said.

The Iowa Department of Transportation is adding adult changing rooms to four interstate rest areas this year. Each room has an adult-size changing table that can be raised and lowered with a remote control so caregivers can safely change the clothes of a dependent child or adult.